Friday, July 31, 2015

To prepare, to encourage preventive actions and ongoing maintenance, and most of all to nurture and support empathy for all and encourage practice, here is a great short video that only scratches the surface :

An outstanding, frightening and sad article which hopefully can lead to change in a skillful and appropriate direction - therefore I simply quote it as is:

"The nuclear deal with Iran’s fanatical anti-Jewish regime will fuel racism on a global scale.

Barack Obama’s election to the presidency represented to many
Americans this country’s final triumph over racism. Reversing the record
of slavery and institutionalized discrimination, his victory was hailed
as a redemptive moment for America and potentially for humankind. How
grotesque that the president should now douse that hope by fueling
racism on a global scale.

The Iranian regime is currently the
world’s leading exponent of anti-Jewish racism. Comparisons to Nazi
Germany are always a last resort, since even with all the evidence
before us it is hard to fathom the evil the Nazis perpetrated. Yet
Iran’s frank genocidal ambition dwarfs its predecessor’s. Whereas Adolf Hitler and Reinhard Heydrich
had to plot the “Final Solution” in secrecy, using euphemisms for their
intended annihilation of the Jews of Europe, Iran’s Supreme leader
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei tweets that Israel “has no cure but to
be annihilated.” Iran’s leaders, relishing how small Israel is, call it a
“one bomb state,” and until the time arrives to deliver that bomb, they
sponsor anti-Israel terrorism through Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other
militias.

President Obama takes some forms of racism seriously.
Without waiting for a judgment to be rendered, he leaped to the defense
of my Harvard colleague Henry Louis “Skip” Gates Jr., who in 2009 was
involved in a confrontation with Cambridge police investigating a
reported break-in at his house. In the disputed shooting of Trayvon Martin
in Sanford, Fla., in 2012, the president identified with the victim of
the alleged racism to the point of saying the 17-year-old “could have
been my son.”

Yet
when it comes to the world’s most widespread and ideologically driven
racism, President Obama seems to have a blind spot, initiating a nuclear
deal with the fanatical anti-Jewish regime in Tehran, despite what he
calls Iran’s “bad behavior.” The euphemism this time is his, not that of
the perpetrators, and it camouflages their intentions even if they
won’t.

Perhaps Mr. Obama is oblivious to what the scholar Robert Wistrich
(who died in May) called “the longest hatred” because it has been so
much a part of his world as he moved through life. Muslim Indonesia,
where he lived from age 6 to 10, trails only Pakistan and Iran in its
hostility to Jews. An animus against Jews and Israel was a hallmark of
the Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s church in Chicago that Mr. Obama attended
for two decades. And before he ran for office, Mr. Obama carried the
standard of the international left that invented the stigma of
Zionism-as-imperialism. As a presidential candidate, Mr. Obama felt
obliged to repudiate his pastor (who had famously cursed America from
the pulpit), and muted his far-left credentials. Mr. Obama was voted
into office by an electorate enamored of the idea that he would oppose
all forms of racism. He has not met that expectation.

Some Jewish
critics of Mr. Obama may be tempted to put his derelictions in a line
of neglect by other presidents, but there is a difference. Thus one may
argue that President Roosevelt should have bombed the approach routes to
Auschwitz or allowed the Jewish-refugee ship St. Louis to dock in the
U.S. during World War II, but those were at worst sins of omission. In
sharpest contrast, President Obama’s nuclear agreement with Iran is an
act of commission. This is the first time the U.S. will have
deliberately entered into a pact with a country committed to
annihilating another people—a pact that doesn’t even require formal
repudiation of the country’s genocidal aims.

As a Jew I know that
the appeal to history is about as effective as the child’s threat of
punishment against the bully the child cannot hope to defeat.
Nonetheless, Jews do “write” history, thanks to the outsize evils
marshaled against them. Because the most repressive and aggressive
regimes continue to organize against the Jews, the Jewish people have
become the “true north” of toleration and concern for human rights.
Those who defend the Jews are necessarily on the side of peace and
brotherhood, those who attack them invariably on the side of evil.
Depending on the outcome of the Iran deal, this outreach to an
anti-Jewish regime may one day rival the blot of slavery on the American
record. Israel will strive to protect its citizens, but Mr. Obama has
increased the odds against them.

What of American Jews in all
this? It is sometimes mistakenly assumed that those who are passionately
for Israel are therefore less for America. It is just the opposite:
Anti-Jewish aggression is always aimed at the self-accountable way of
life that the Jews represent. “Death to the Jews!” is a call to arms
against Western liberal democracies; that is why in Iran the cry is
often accompanied by “Death to America!”
Americans intent on
stopping Iran are not against the president but in favor of the hope he
once embodied for an end to racism. They hope for respectful treatment
of blacks and Jews alike. They believe that America stands for
humanity’s better nature."

Ms. Wisse, a former professor of
Yiddish and comparative literature at Harvard, is the author of “Jews
and Power” (Schocken, 2007) and “No Joke: Making Jewish Humor”
(Princeton, 2013).

Thursday, July 30, 2015

Myriad beings in myriad realms serve life by enabling us to
have food nourishment. Worms and insects of all sorts, bacteria, fungi and
other beings, enable plants to convert sunlight, water, minerals and other
“inanimates” into fruits, vegetables, grains, tubers and leaves, all of which
give their life so we can eat and feed other animals whose products we use.
There are myriad farmers nurturing these and providing them to us, along with
truckers, grocers and others. There are producers of tractors, myriad
implements, irrigators, trucks and other technologies which are used to farm,
as well as those who mine and process the metal and hydrocarbon energy sources
which these depend on. Our practice is to acknowledge and appreciate all of
these as our each bite, chew and swallow practice which makes possible life and
activity.

Failing to appreciate this interdependent interbeing that we
are, believing self-centered judging and ideologies, we separate from our life and
hinder this that we are, causing suffering and harm. The question in our
practice life is, how to skillfully and appropriately take care of problems
when they arise?

Living in California means facing the ongoing drought and
doing our part in the water we use, adjusting the use of toilets and shower,
and many other things.

Recently I was sent this interesting op-ed which begins:

“The worst thing about California’s
drought is the suffering it has caused ordinary people. In many places,
drinking wells have dried up. The crisis is so severe that the state has
restricted water use.

The second-worst thing about the
drought is how farmers are bearing most of the blame. We hear one figure over
and over: Agriculture consumes 80% of California’s water.

That statistic makes farmers like me
look like gluttons—and it suggests that if we were to reduce our reliance on
water just a little, then our state’s predicament would vanish like a puddle on
a hot day.

Except that it’s not true. Farmers
don’t use 80% of California’s water…”

The farmer's perspective was
different from my own - it showed another world and taught me. The information and suggestions of the article can and should shed further light on our circumstances, ongoing plans and actions, as well as enhance our appreciation for the practice of all beings. Though the article included the author's anger and particular political positions, hopefully those will not hinder joint
efforts by all Californians for skillful action.

These are some of the questions being raised by commentators from various political and ideological perspectives. What is so?

Here are several quotes from and links to interesting articles. The most sad and frightening, if true, is the last one.

"What’s most troubling about the White House’s Jew-baiting campaign is
that it appears to be a deliberate attempt to turn the debate about the
Iran deal into a debate about the influence of rich, powerful Jews with
suspect loyalties to their home country. The fact is, the Iran deal
isn’t bad because Israel says so, but because it’s bad for America.
Another sad fact is that when you ally your country with an
obscurantist, anti-Semitic, criminal regime, you’re bound to adopt some
of their tactics."

"This accord will strengthen a contemptible regime. And so I
propose—futilely, I know—that now, in the aftermath of the accord,
America proceed to weaken it. The conclusion of the Joint Comprehensive
Plan of Action should be accompanied by a resumption of our hostility to
the Iranian regime and its various forces. Diplomats like to say that
you talk with your enemies. They are right. And we have talked with
them. But they are still our enemies. This is the hour not for a fresh
start but for a renovation of principle. We need to restore
democratization to its pride of place among the priorities of our
foreign policy and oppress the theocrats in Tehran everywhere with
expressions, in word and in deed, of our implacable hostility to their
war on their own people. We need to support the dissidents in any way we
can, not least so that they do not feel abandoned and alone, and
tiresomely demand the release of Mir-Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi
from the house arrest in which they have been sealed since the crackdown
in 2009. (And how in good conscience could we have proceeded with the
negotiations while the American journalist Jason Rezaian was a captive
in an Iranian jail? Many years ago, when I studied the Dreyfus affair, I
learned that there are times when an injustice to only one man deserves
to bring things to a halt.) We need to despise the regime loudly and
regularly, and damage its international position as fiercely and
imaginatively as we can, for its desire to exterminate Israel. We need
to arm the enemies of Iran in Syria and Iraq, and for many reasons. (In
Syria, we have so far prepared 60 fighters:
America is back!) We need to explore, with diplomatic daring, an
American-sponsored alliance between Israel and the Sunni states, which
are now experiencing an unprecedented convergence of interests.

But we will do none of this. We will instead persist in letting the
fire spread and letting time tell, which we call realism. Wanting not to
fight wars, we refuse to join struggles. Sometimes, I guess, history
really is a rut."

And here is a very different evaluation on the same website, which posits "the summary is that the administration has both specific facts and
longer-term historic patterns on its side in recommending the deal."

"fairly unambiguous conclusions: that the Western delegates crossed
all of the red lines that they drew themselves and conceded most of what
was termed critical at the outset; and that the Iranians have achieved
almost all of their goals."

There are some areas in which the Iran agreement might actually bump into law and legal authority:

"Even if Congress doesn’t vote to bar President Obama from lifting
sanctions on Iran, the president still wouldn’t be able to deliver fully
on the deal’s unprecedented sanctions-lifting commitments. They were
promised regardless of any future Iranian aggression in the region,
sponsorship of terrorist acts or other misconduct.

Some of the
U.S. statutes allow the president to lift certain sanctions on Iran. But
many of the most important sanctions—including sanctions against Iran’s
central bank—cannot be waived unless the president certifies that Iran
has stopped its ballistic-missile program, ceased money-laundering and
no longer sponsors international terrorism. He certainly can’t do that
now, and nothing in the deal forces Iran to take either step. The
Security Council’s blessing of the nuclear agreement has no bearing on
these U.S. sanctions.
The administration faces another serious
problem because the deal requires the removal of state and local
Iran-related sanctions. That would have been all right if Mr. Obama had
pursued a treaty with Iran, which would have bound the states, but his
executive-agreement approach cannot pre-empt the authority of the
states."

All sorts of interesting clauses and side deals keep appearing in public awareness such as the following suspicion that the deal "requires" the US to help protect the Iranian nuclear facilities against cyber and military attacks:

The following is a sad and frightening conclusion from an article, which if true make Obama and Kerry out to be short-sighted and possibly dangerous leaders:

"Yet when even a famous Iranian “moderate” like the former President Hashemi Rafsanjani
has said—as he did in 2001, contemplating a nuclear exchange—that “the
use of even one nuclear bomb inside Israel will destroy everything.
However, it will only harm the Islamic world. It is not irrational to
contemplate such an eventuality,” how can deterrence work?

The brutal truth is that the actual alternatives before us are not Mr.
Obama’s deal or war. They are conventional war now or nuclear war later.
John Kerry
recently declared that Israel would be making a “huge mistake” to take
military action against Iran. But Mr. Kerry, as usual, is spectacularly
wrong. Israel would not be making a mistake at all, let alone a huge
one. On the contrary, it would actually be sparing itself—and the rest
of the world—a nuclear conflagration in the not too distant future."

Saturday, July 25, 2015

This is a most interesting explorations of the Islamic State movement - starting with a review of recent books.

"Although the movement has changed its name seven times and has had
four leaders, it continues to treat Zarqawi as its founder, and to
propagate most of his original beliefs and techniques of terror. The New York Times refers to it as “the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL.”
Zarqawi also called it “Army of the Levant,” “Monotheism and Jihad,”
“al-Qaeda in Iraq,” and “Mujihadeen Shura Council.” (A movement known
for its marketing has rarely cared about consistent branding.) I will
simplify the many changes of name and leadership by referring to it
throughout as “ISIS,” although it has of course evolved during its fifteen years of existence.

The
problem, however, lies not in chronicling the successes of the
movement, but in explaining how something so improbable became possible.
The explanations so often given for its rise—the anger of Sunni
communities, the logistical support provided by other states and groups,
the movement’s social media campaigns, its leadership, its tactics, its
governance, its revenue streams, and its ability to attract tens of
thousands of foreign fighters—fall far short of a convincing theory of
the movement’s success."

Thursday, July 23, 2015

"A robust federalism, Mr. Freedman says, would give us more liberty,
more democracy and a more competent government. In short, let New York
and Texas pursue their very different business models as they like.
Citizens would have more choices, and over time government competence
would increase—because we would find out which policies work and because
state governments, unlike the national one, must fear that residents
will respond to idiotic policies by voting with their feet.

Mr. Freedman illustrates these advantages with telling and often
hilarious examples. In 2013, he reports, the federal government spent
$118 million to promote “recreational boating safety.” So vital is this
program “that it comes under the purview of the Department of Homeland
Security—and so rationally administered that landlocked Nebraska gets
more money for recreational boating safety than Hawaii.”

The above is from a review ofA Less Perfect Union by Adam Freedman. The rest of this interesting review and exploration of alternative forms of government is here:

You are the boundless universe, this endless dimension life, this not-two –
whether we recognize this or not. Unfortunately, self-centeredness leads us to
miss this, even to deny this with actions, words, thoughts and reactions. This
is called dualistic delusion. Please look closely at what is so for you – what
are the consequences of your beliefs? This flower here now is the whole
universe.

There is no you except “including” this universe – and ongoing practice nurtures
awakening to this. Yes, we can and must be this awakening right now.

You are not “you” inside a container of skin and bones, inside emotions,
thoughts and so forth; you are not “you” going about in a separate universe. And
if you believe otherwise, if you believe that life is “you” going about in a
separate universe, what are the consequences of that for you?

There is no you without the universe as is right now. Of course, provisionally
there is no problem with all sorts of dualistic statements, beliefs and
behaviors as long as we remember their provisional nature. There are
consequences of using them as anything more than provisional.

Our life is ongoing Bodhisattvic Vows and Bodhisattvic effort - nurturing and
supporting all we encounter in awakening as this universe moment now....

Wednesday, July 22, 2015

The following review of The Biology of Desire explores important aspects regarding addiction - which in its many forms from self-addiction onward we all face in coping with the stress and dissatisfaction of impermanence.

Here are some major points:

"All of Mr. Lewis’s case studies end well or at least optimistically.
At the heart of the recoveries are new, more constructive habits,
identities and relationships—and, in the brains of the subjects, the
sculpting of new synaptic patterns. As Mr. Lewis shows, the physiology
behind the addiction process can be intentionally engaged by addicts to
put them on the path to recovery. By exploiting the neuroplastic
capacities of the brain, individuals can develop strategies for
self-control.

It may well be, as Mr. Lewis says, that addiction
is a form of normal habit formation. But isn’t it more like a normal
process gone awry? When outcomes are so dire, how is this not a
pathological state? Mr. Lewis is deeply humane in his regard for people
trapped in compulsive habits, so much so that he seems reluctant to
impose any rules on their behavior and ends up treating them more like
patients than he might like to admit. He is big on the so-called
Vancouver model in which addicts are guided to safer drug-using methods
and gently encouraged to get themselves together. But he de-emphasizes
the importance of behavioral shaping through external incentives and
sanctions, which are at the core of drug treatments that divert addicts
from the criminal-justice system."

Tuesday, July 14, 2015

A moving story of a patient's strength and joy in the midst of working with life-threatening illness, debilitation and fear. Highlighted as well is how the doctor takes it, especially seeing some his own assumptions. Interesting also are the varied comments, some hostile and, to me, quite surprising.

Monday, July 13, 2015

Does preparing for war deter war? Or does it arouse potential opponents and lead to war?

What deters war? Not preparing for war does not seem to prevent war, nor do treaties and international bodies such as the UN, NATO or European Union prevent war - witness the invasions of Georgia and Ukraine by Russia or the current wars in Africa, Syria and Iraq, to name just a few.

“Ghost Fleet” portrays Beijing paralyzing the U.S. military by
inserting malware into chips manufactured in China for use in American
warships and planes. When the Chinese activate the chips to cripple U.S.
fighters, planes from the 1970s are redeployed because they don’t have
Chinese chips.

Just as the Pentagon turned to Detroit to build
armaments for World War II, in the novel Silicon Valley returns to its
defense-industry roots to win the cyberwar. Among the characters is a
high-tech billionaire who launches himself into orbit to reclaim the
international space station after it is seized by Russians and used by
the Chinese to destroy U.S. satellites. The hacking group Anonymous
helps by defeating a Chinese cyberattack on the U.S. electrical grid.

The
novel includes almost 400 endnotes with citations showing even the most
far-fetched technologies in the book are based on reality."

"The indelibly tainted battle
flag came down in South Carolina, but in context, other Confederate
monuments can help teach history for all Americans....."

The following is from a very interesting article about the South, the Confederate battle flag and how to use this time as a way forward for compassion and connectedness:

"in the 1940's opponents of the emerging civil-rights movement raised the old banner for a new battle.

Soon,
former Confederate states incorporated it into their state flags, and
militant white supremacist groups like the Ku Klux Klan began deploying
it as a symbol of resistance to integration and voting rights. The worst
proponents of white supremacy displayed that emblem while committing
unspeakable violence against African-Americans and white supporters of
civil rights. They still do: Witness Charleston. Symbols matter.
They say at a glimpse what words cannot, encapsulating beliefs and
aspirations, prejudices and fears. Having no intrinsic value, they take
meaning from the way we use them, changing over time along with our
actions."

For further exploration of a healing strategy for the nation in these matters and racial conflicts, see: